Tunneling through Band Tail States

Abstract

On the basis of the one electron wave function for the impure semiconductor obtained by using the diagram perturbation method, the tunneling current it a model p-n junction is analyzed in the framework of Conley, Duke, Mahan, and Tiemann. The expression contains the density of states factor explicitly and a method of determining the density of states tail through tunneling measurements is given. An example is shown on the state density of the (000) valley of germanium.